I don’t have any electrocardiography books on my list of best medical books of all time. There are a few contenders for that spot. One of them is Rapid Interpretation of ECGs in Emergency Medicine: A Visual Guide (2012) by Drs. Jennifer Martindale and David Brown.
The book is basically a marked-up atlas of important, must-be-able-to-interpret-correctly electrocardiograms. Almost every important ECG that you can think of can be found here: hyperkalemia, Brugada pattern, Wolff-Parkinson-White pattern, Wellens sign, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, and many more. These findings are shown both as unkowns and as fully marked-up versions with highlights arrows and text. That way, the reader can first look at the unknown, guess the interpretation, and then look at the marked-up version for confirmation and explanation. There are sometimes several variations of important ECG patterns, which helps improve the reader’s ability to identify and diagnose important ECG abnormalities. Also, there is an excellent introductory essay at the beginning of each chapter: they tell you what they are going to show you, then they show it to you, and then they explain to you what they just showed you. Well done!
The titling of the book as an emergency medicine work is a bit unfortunate because, as the authors correctly point out in the preface, the intended audience “is not only emergency physicians, but also physicians from other specialties; residents in emergency medicine, internal medicine, and family practice; physician assistants; nurse practitioners; and advanced medical students who want to become more competent in ECG interpretation.” The title, as it stands, artificially limits the market potential of this book in a very substantial way. Further, one shouldn’t have to wait for the third line of the title to learn that we are dealing with “a visual guide.” The book is first and foremost a visual guide to ECGs. Therefore, the next edition should probably be titled more simply: A Visual Guide to ECG Interpretation. Done! People who want to get better at ECG interpretation, whether emergency medicine-oriented or not, will know what it is, how to find it, and what to do with it.
In any event, and regardless of what one wants to call it, this is plainly one of the best electrocardiography books in existence.
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